Elections Officials Blamed for Bungling Military Ballots

New York City’s Board of Elections came under withering criticism Monday for failing to send absentee ballots to New Yorkers in the military and living overseas before a federal deadline.

Sen. Charles Schumer, who wrote the 2009 legislation that required the ballots be mailed out in plenty of time for men and women in the military to vote, said the ballots should be put on the next plane to Afghanistan.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said any such delay would be “reprehensible,” though he added he did not personally know if the ballots were late

“It would not surprise me if the Board of Elections screwed up on this,” Bloomberg said Monday. “They’ve not done a good enough job yet, and rather than criticize them, maybe it’s time we just tried to help them. The trouble is, they don’t seem to be willing to take help from other people.”

At issue is a new law requiring states to mail ballots to troops 45 days before a general election. Because the New York’s primary is relatively late — it came this year on Sept. 14 — that state received a deadline waiver. Yet New York City and several counties’ boards of elections still failed to meet that new deadline of October 1.

According to a letter sent to the Pentagon last week by state board of elections officials, New York City, Erie, Niagara, Putnam and Westchester counties all failed to get all their ballots in the mail to military personnel and Americans living abroad.

Schumer said in a statement that the whole reason he wrote the law was “so our brave men and women overseas would no longer be disenfranchised and there is absolutely no excuse for failing to get this done.”

Spokespeople for the city and state election boards did not immediately return messages for comment on Monday, a government holiday.

The delay means approximately 50,000 people from New York City now in the military could miss their chance to vote because it can take two weeks for the mail system to deliver ballots to troops overseas. New York State allows for absentee ballots to be counted up to 13 days after Election Day, which is Nov. 2.

In their Oct. 5 message to military officials, the state Board of Elections said they also planned to post copies of the ballot online so they can be delivered electronically to military personnel.